Resource Hub
The resources provided below represent the best available research we can present for racial wealth inequity. They include research summaries, analysis, and reports created specifically for the project as well as assets created by others committed to the same work: describing wealth inequity, tracing its likely causes, and proposing possible interventions to restore equity.
For most people in the United States, debt is the means to increase net worth through the long-term financing of assets, or the offset of major investments like college tuition. At the same time, many forms of debt are predatory, making it more difficult for individuals and households to accumulate wealth. Households of color, especially Black households, have historically been discriminated against when it comes to access and approval for “healthy” debt while they are disproportionately targeted by forms of predatory debt, like payday loans and rent-to-own schemes.
Business ownership tends to be a valuable path for wealth accumulation, which is particularly true for high-net-worth families. Equity gained from business holdings, in fact, makes up some of the most significant portions of wealth accumulated by the richest families in the country. Systemic barriers to business financing, business visibility, and support of small and medium businesses has historically led to lower rates of business ownership, as well as lower rates of long-term business growth and success for owners of color, contributing to large disparities in equity holdings and business performance overall.
Alongside interventions at the household level, investment in shared assets and resources for community access has a strongly positive effect on alleviating factors that contribute to racial wealth inequity. Community wealth-building strategies, such as neighborhood crowdfunding or community land trusts, are ways to expand shared prosperity and democratic control over neighborhood assets, while also expanding investment opportunities for community members. Importantly, community ownership of assets gives individuals meaningful decision-making power, empowering communities who have historically not had a say in development decisions, which can promote neighborhood stability in places with rapidly escalating prices.
Access to educational opportunities and other forms of skills attainment recognition by accredited programs is a major component of earnings potential, as well as the ability to retain inherited or earned assets over time. Yet, educational opportunities in the United States have historically discriminated against people of color and especially Black communities, exacerbating factors that lead to inequities in wealth accumulation and retention by race.
Homeownership provides economic security and is a core vehicle for household wealth accumulation. For most households, their home is the largest component of non-retirement wealth. However, the long history of discriminatory housing policies, including redlining, racial covenants, steering, exclusionary zoning, and predatory lending, have led to stark racial disparities in homeownership rates. Because of this, increasing homeownership rates for Black and other communities of color is viewed as a core strategy for closing the racial wealth gap.
Financial transfers from family members or friends are one way that state-sponsored racial discrimination in asset building has been passed forward to the present day. Young adults today are more likely to purchase their first home if their parents benefited from intentionally discriminatory wealth-building programs in the past, for example, helping contribute to the racial disparities in homeownership that we see today. Intergenerational support often comes in the form of post-death inheritances, but it also can come as an “inter vivos transfer,” or a gift made from someone while still alive — like family assistance with down payments or tuition.
Greater Boston is among the wealthiest regions in the world, but only for some. Centuries of institutional racism and economic policy decisions have left Greater Boston with staggering wealth inequity. Unfortunately, there’s a lack of high-quality data on net asset levels at the local level, so the papers in this category present the best estimates we do have. Other work in this area explores individual components of wealth, like homeownership rates, where researchers do have access to high-quality local data.
Long-term savings and retirement security are both major components of wealth accumulation, creating a high potential for wealth to become intergenerationally linked. While measures like Social Security have expanded the availability of retirement funds to most U.S. households, these benefits are considered the bare minimum now and typically must be supplemented by other means, especially employer-sponsored retirement benefits. Yet the turn to defined contribution plans, such as 401k’s, has disproportionately benefited White workers. Meanwhile, Black, Latino and other workers of color are often employed in positions without access to these kinds of benefits, which can lead to later and more financially precarious retirements.
Racial wealth inequity is a complex problem that requires a multifaceted response. Research in this section explores a range of policy solutions for boosting assets and closing racial wealth divides. Some solutions may apply more to people with specific racial identities or family connections to documented policy harm, like housing discrimination. Other solutions may instead be available based on financial need or geography. When thoughtfully designed, these programs can help resolve uneven distributions of wealth.
The reports in this section explore the best available data on wealth in the United States, often disaggregating by race, income, educational attainment, and geography. Many of these resources look at trends over time, trying to assess whether or not we’ve made progress in boosting assets for lower-wealth families or narrowing the distribution. Reports elsewhere in this resource center investigate dynamics specific to individual components of wealth — like homeownership, business ownership, and retirement — but the resources here all aim to take a more crosscutting view, analyzing trends in net asset levels.
Since the causes of racial wealth divides are wide-ranging, no simple category approach can neatly organize all the relevant research. This “Other” category is offered for resources that are not any less important but do not neatly fit into other categories. Resources in this category include think pieces that offer unique perspectives on racial wealth inequities and related issues of economic inequality; research on intergenerational economic mobility; and research on the challenges of wealth building for women.